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The Value Expectation Bias in Test Anxiety Individuals: Test Specificity or Threat Generality?
  • Yuhong Ou,
  • Renlai Zhou
Yuhong Ou
Nanjing University
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Renlai Zhou
Nanjing University

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Abstract

The value expectation (reward or punishment) of outcomes based on experience and current information decides whether to do and how much effort to put into executing the current task. Individuals with test anxiety have difficulty inhibiting test-related and test-unrelated threat stimuli. We suggested that the excessive negative value expectation for threat stimuli played an important role. Thus, the current study investigated the value expectation towards test-related and test-unrelated threat stimuli in test anxiety individuals. The ERP results showed that, in the high test anxiety (HTA) group, compared to neutral stimuli, test-related and unrelated threat stimuli induced more negative FRN amplitudes following negative feedback and more positive FRN amplitudes following positive feedback. Moreover, the FRN amplitudes induced by negative feedback following test-related and test-unrelated threat stimuli were significantly more negative in the HTA group than in the LTA group. In the FRN difference wave (d-FRN) results, test-related and unrelated threat stimuli induced more negative d-FRN than neutral stimuli. Additionally, the HTA group showed a more negative d-FRN than the LTA group under the test-related threat condition. No differences were found in the LTA group. In the ERD results of the beta band, the ERD power induced by negative feedback following test-related threat stimuli was significantly stronger than those following test-unrelated threat stimuli in the HTA group. However, no significant differences were found in the average P3 amplitude and ERS results in the theta band. These findings suggested that individuals with HTA had a negative value expectation for threat stimuli.